Grocery Shopping budget thread

v8monkeyboy

Hi,

I've been reading the OS threads for ages now (and in case you're wondering I'm using my husband's log in!!), and have been in turns inspired and left feeling inadequate at our spending.

Until last week, we were spending £125 per week on food, pet food and cleaning materials, toiletries, and toilet rolls. That's for 2 adults, and 1 Border Collie. In my defence my husband is in the Army and eats EVERYTHING brought home. He's also been known to put away a round of sandwiches and a slice of cake 15 minutes before his evening meal.

I cook everything from scratch. I don't buy expensive cleaning materials, I bake everything from bread, to biscuits, cakes and pies (used to run my own bakery), and the dog has a diet of raw bones and chicken wings, so no expensive food.

All leftovers are either eaten for lunch the next day or frozen for future use. All meat comes from the local excellent butcher, and I'm not afraid to use the cheaper cuts of meat. But...we eat meat every day, and I think that's where the problem lies. I also mealplan (have done this from the day we met), and don't tend to deviate from the shopping list unless the OH is with me.

The thing is, we can currently afford the amount we are spending, but the reality is that if we could save some on the food and some on the telephone bill, the debts I have would be paid off in 3 years, not 6!!! We could snow ball our payments, and stop paying interest on the credit cards.

So, I have decided to try and reduce our weekly bill by at least £25, and then if successful, by another £25, down to a total of £75. The OH thinks £100 can be done, but worries he'll go hungry at £75 per week!

I'll be a regular on here, I think!

T x

Cornishpixie_2

grannytwice wrote: »

cornishpixie, you are doing well take away the school dinner money and you are managing on 226 a month and having wine i like the sound of that, what sort of meals do you cook, do you plan a weeks meals at a time, can you pass on any tips or fav recipes.

Thanks I think sometimes I do get a bit carried away. This week I have things like: chicken lasagne, chicken curry and lemon chicken with spaghetti or linguini(out of 1 large free range chicken) all with whatever veg on offer. then jacket pots, and a freezer left over night, but have emergency whoppsie pizza in as never know what time hubby in:rotfl: . sausage and pasta/or jacket pots and veg and Hm burgers buns and wedges. I generally try and balance it out, with chicken,pasta, meat, pacific pie (which is a sort of tuna casserole). Then next week base 3 meals around large cooked ham, then maybe minced beef,HM burgers, chilli spag bol. which you can freeze for another night. See u have got me on a roll now:o Oh and my hubby likes plate pies so handy to make a few, corned beef and pot, cheese and ham, chicken then freeze without cooking. Then heat from frozen saves a bit on the loaf of bread, pound of cheese and packet ham he goes through before or after tea.

HockeyDuo8083

I need to try and work out a budget. I guest-timate about £200 for everything (food, cleaning, clothes powder etc).
OH works offshore and is away for 2 weeks at a time. He it's more than I do (what man doesn't right?!) but I find it hard to do a monthly budget and it is just me for a lot of the time.
We are moving into our first home together and I am keen to streamline everything so we know where money is coming in and out. Currently we just buy weekly and any 'fresh' produce like meat tends to be bought as and when we need it.


Is anyone else inthe situation where their OH is away for 2 weeks at a time? Any tips?

Edit: Have re-jigged things and we are planning to spend £150 per month by doing a bulk shop at the beginning andthe topping up with fresh milk/bred/veg as required.
doing a tracked spend through April to see if we can flag anything up. i.e. writing down a note of EVERYTHING we spend in April and then going through it at the end.

Cornishpixie_2

My hubby doesn't work away, but I did think in your situation it might help if you were to spend time batch cooking homemade ready meals for you. Buying veg, fruit, and other fresh stuff as when. Then order online for staples maybe months worth, tea, coffee, tins, pasta rice. Then have a loose menu plan with meals you both like for when hubby home. It would mean you spend less time shopping when he is home, so can spend more quality time together and would have rough idea of monthly spend. HTH. Good luck

natc

This thread is fab! There is only me and oh and our cat, we used to budget for £300 month, spending about £60-75 week. OS forum is great and makes you think about what ya actually buying in the supermarket and tips and ideas on meals.

I recently started a thread about butchers and gorocery shops (!), asking if it is better quality than supermarkets, but thats because id seen jamie olivers save our bacon and it made me really angry and disgusted for the animals and for what supermarkets sell us! Its crap! So been going to the butchers at a market and grocery shop over the road from there, and its great, love it. The butcher usually knocks the cost down coz we buy a few bits.

My oh and i hate the supermarkets, we are like children not wanting to go! But weve now decided to go to the supermarket (ASDA) at the beginning of the month and bulk buy, get cereal, pasta, rice etc, dry foods, cat food, cleaning stuff, and then we just have to go to the market/grocery shop once a week for fruit and veg etc. As it happens, the market we go to is in a small town and it has a wilkinsons, home bargains, and bargain madness all in the same vicinity, so we are going to try and get all our toiletries and dry foods from there and try and banish supermarkets all together! (maybe just nip in for yoghurts...) Doing this, we think we would spend around £50-60 a month on the bulk buys, and then £30 a week at the market, around £190 ish a month. We wanted to do this for quality of food, and to not have to go to the dreaded supermarkets, but appears we'll save a lot too.

Good times! :j

Taye

what do you think is the MINAMUM budget a family can live off as a regular thing? we all tend to find we can cut back here or there the odd month when money's tight.

But what you do think is the minamum i can realistically feed myself, 2 kids, 2 cats and a dog on a month? Without resorting to feeding us utter rubbish and staying healthy?

And how would you go about it?!

whatatwit

Taye, have you read through Weezl's threads, there are some fantastic ideas and a lot of the meals are costed out.
I know she was aiming for 50p a day per person and that including feeding a skinny Acetate Monkey (Mr Weezl)

I think the more time you have to search out bargains, the cheaper it gets. If you are able to visit a supermarket several days a week and scout around for the reductions, then there are some good savings, but you are limited to what's there.
Likewise, markets at the end of the day are great, if you don't mind using a full box of tomatoes or several trees of broccoli that week :rotfl:

Penelope_Penguin

Taye wrote: »

what do you think is the MINAMUM budget a family can live off as a regular thing? we all tend to find we can cut back here or there the odd month when money's tight.

But what you do think is the minamum i can realistically feed myself, 2 kids, 2 cats and a dog on a month? Without resorting to feeding us utter rubbish and staying healthy?

And how would you go about it?!

As this has fallen from the front page of Old Style, I'll add it to the existing thread of Grocery Budgets. so that you can see what others spend

To keep costs down, eat seasonally, buy locally (market and butcher rather than supermarket), cook from scratch, menu plan and use leftovers

Penny. x

Taye

tbh it's not meals i have trouble with per say it's children with hollow legs who make eating/snacking a national past time.

im just trying to bring my spend down and it's soo hard, i don't think i spend a gross amount but i know it needs to come down futher than it is.

I already pad/bulk out meals, bargin shop, scout for whoopsies, eat leaftovers etc just not sure what else to do.

whatatwit

Hi Taye, have you tried having soup before a meal.
I buy the Knorr packet ones, whisk into boiling water and simmer for 5 mins, they are really nice and make a panful. The packets aren't too expensive and are often on offer.
It might help to make a meal go further.
Of course, you could make your own using a chicken carcase and some old veggies/peeling